Monthly Archives: February 2018

2018 Officer Elections will be held via electronic voting. You will all be getting an email from a company called Simply Voting the title of the email will look like this.

“International Association of EMTs and Paramedics (IAEP) R7-167 ”

Your Elector ID and password is in the email. Please click on the email and vote for the officers. If you did not get the email please contact Secretary Amanda Layne at ajlayne0248@gmail.com. We can update the list and have an email sent to you. If you did not provide the union with an email before than you will get a post card mailed to your address on record with Allina, with the information on how to vote. We have voting open from Feb 19th till the 26th.

As always look in different folders in your email for the email, they don’t always end up in the inbox. Gmail sends it into the newsletter mailbox not the main inbox.

The Union officers would like to thank the membership for showing up to vote this week. We had the most members EVER vote on a contract or election.

The vote has been counted and the contract was overwhelmingly NOT ratified.

VOTES:

Total Votes: 350

Yes: No:

28 322

66% of the membership voted with a 92% voting NO and 8% voting YES.

Where do we go from here? The union has informed management of the results and expressed our interest to meet back at the table and come to a mutual agreement. We also notified them that we will follow through with the process of filing for arbitration per our contract. It is the unions wish that we meet at the table and use arbitration as a last resort.

Arbitration can take some time to get a result. We file for arbitration, select an arbitrator along with management. It’s called striking arbitrators similar to selecting a jury and striking jurors until there is only one left and that will be the arbitrator. We then schedule with the arbitrator and have the hearing. The arbitrator than has 45 days to make a determination. This will be a few months from now when we get a decision. Please read Article 5 of our contract for the process.

We have a membership meeting in two weeks February 28, 2018 at the Roseville VFW. See you all then to answer more questions.

The ratification dates and times have been set please refer to the flyer. Voting will be done in person only and by secret ballot. You are permitted to vote at any location during the voting hours. We will do the voting next week Tuesday to Friday and the votes will be counted at Mounds View on Friday evening. If you have any questions please ask your union rep or negotiating team member.

Local 167 and AHEMS met again today to try and work out a Tentative Agreement for a new Contract. We were not successful. After 9+ hours of work, AHEMS presented us with a Final Offer. We agreed to bring this Offer forward to the membership for a vote. The IAEP Negotiating committee does NOT support it.

This Offer includes some seniority improvements along with other non economic gains.

This Offer includes a Primary Call provision. Primary call would mean that everyone under 25 years of service must bid an extra day every two months (6 shifts per year), including mandatory weekends. Those over 25 years of service will be required to work (4 shifts per year). You would bid a 12 hour period, either days or nights, and then be responsible for being on-call for that period anywhere in the Metro. This provision would include a small amount of hourly pay for being on-call at the current contract wage of $4.50/hr for unrestricted on-call pay and your hourly wage or OT once called in.

The Offer also includes varying per cent increases for start to step 4 and 2% across the board raises to steps 5-12, a bonus for extra weekend shifts, and additional seniority steps at 15 and 20 years. Despite some favorable additions we do not feel that this offer meets the needs of the majority of our Membership. We do not feel that any Offer that asks people to donate additional time, even for nominal compensation, is worth putting in a Contract. We will be asking Members to vote NO on this Offer.

We are also looking at setting up meetings for ratification voting next week. Stay tuned for more information.